Oh baby – eighteen months on, several thousand hours of work, hearings,
polling, research and media briefings later, I finally have an inkling
of what it was like for my wife to give birth to our gorgeous daughter
a few months ago. I am talking about the delivery this week of the
section of IDS’ Social Justice Commission’s report dealing with the
voluntary sector, produced by the Third Sector subgroup, which I
chaired, and Cameron Watt deputy chaired. Our report will be found at
the end Iain’s main report at volume 6 and, although much of the focus
of the press attention so far has been on the Commission’s tax
proposals to strengthen families, I recommend persevering with your
reading to get to our section on the voluntary sector – because the
proposals offer serious hope in the battle against poverty in the UK
today, and in promoting the socially responsible society David Cameron
wants.

Essentially, we believe that both the public and the Government has
seriously under-valued the voluntary sector’s importance in fighting
poverty – although their qualities of innovation, commitment,
flexibility and independence place them at a huge advantage over public
and private agencies in helping hard to reach communities. This makes
it our duty to maximise their use in fighting poverty, not just to
consider them as an optional add-on to the state. We need to increase
charitable giving, volunteering, and Government support dramatically.
As for the Government, it accepts the third sector’s importance in
principle – Brown’s Treasury itself has stated that voluntary sector
organisations are often “of higher quality, more efficient, more
equitable and more personalised... than either public or private
delivery” – but has woefully failed to uphold this principle in
practice, in either significant funding or other support. And this is
after 10 years of Blair, who at least showed some enthusiasm for the
sector – unlike statist Brown who appears to hold no candle for it at
all.